If The UN Justifies Palestinian Terrorism With A State, Why Wasn't Bin Laden Invited To Speak At The UN?

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat says he is shocked and baffled by what has happened. He has been following developments on television at his headquarters in Gaza.

"First of all, I am offering my condolences, the condolences of the Palestinian people for the American President Bush, to his government, to the American people for this terrible act," he said. "We are completely shocked, completely shocked. It's unbelievable."
Arafat Condemns Attacks on US - 2001-09-11, VOA

The day after 9/11, Michael Kelly wrote about the strange logic used to justify Palestinian terrorism:

Of all the uses of terror, none in the past several decades has been more faddishly popular (at least on the left), and none has been accorded more respectful media coverage, than that of the Palestinians. Yes, Palestinian terrorists and terrorists on behalf of the Palestinian cause murdered innocents -- but that was understandable, the argument went. The Palestinians had been wronged. They were oppressed. They were weak. What else could they do?

Here is where we end up, with murder on a mass scale of people whose sole sin was, apparently, that they were Americans. Immediate suspicion focused on anti-Israeli (and therefore anti-American) terrorist groups. Yasser Arafat, who has championed the legitimacy of anti-Israeli terror his entire career, nonetheless was quick to express himself "completely shocked," at an attack he said he condemned, and he offered the American people condolences on behalf "of the Palestinian people."

I don't doubt Arafat's shock. And I don't think he had anything directly to do with the monstrous evil of Sept. 11. Indeed, it is possible that what happened yesterday had nothing to do with the Middle East. But this evil rose, with hideous logic, directly from the philosophy that the leaders and supporters of the Palestinian cause have long embraced and still embrace -- a philosophy that accepts the murder of innocents as a legitimate expression of a legitimate struggle.

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand. [emphasis added]

And make no mistake: On September 20, the UN will declare to the world that Palestinian terrorism is legitimate.

Hat tip: DG

Technorati Tag: Israel and Palestine and Terrorism.